Metallica back on top
Posted on September 17th, 2008 – 2:16 PMBy Chris Riemenschneider
It only took three days of sales for Metallica to top the Billboard charts this week and turn in the kind of sales numbers that they/rock bands used to amass. “Death Magnetic” sold 490,000 copies in the U.S. between last Friday (release day) and Monday (cut-off day for Billboard charts). Not only is that more than “St. Anger” sold in its first run (418,000), it’s close to the 525,000 copies that the Jonas Brothers recently debuted with over seven days. So, essentially, Metallica out-sold the red-hot teen popsters. Woo-hoo! There is a God, and she does still love rock ‘n’ roll!
More important than all that: What do you all think of the Rick Rubin-produced album? Is the band back on top musically, too?
4 Responses to "Metallica back on top"
Album kicks ash…
This I swear, this I swear, this…I..swear….
Album is great. Hetfield needs voice therapy though. But, can’t complain about the overall product. They need to just keep churning out the albums. No one wants to wait another 5-10 years for the next one.
There’s a lot of controversy about the highly compressed, harsh mastering of the CD, particularly compared to the much better sounding mixes on Guitar Hero 2. G**gle it. Same guy that rendered RHCP Californication unlistenable (Kiedis’ vocals notwithstanding).
I’ve got to agree on the horrible mastering of this album. Try listening to it on headphones! Blah!! It is unlistenable on headphones… every instrument is mixed way too high and there is some easily noticed diginoise from the compression. I like my music loud, but when a song from this album comes on my iPod I have to turn it down because it’s mixed so much louder than 99% of the other albums out there.
That said, the music is certainly better than St. Anger, but it seems like there’s lots of aggression just for the sake of aggression and Hetfield’s words don’t really have much meaning. Many of the songs are way too long also — too much monotonous guitar riffing. Give me a 9 minute … And Justice for All or an 8 minute Disposable Heroes anyday over most of these songs. At least those songs have different pieces (like a metal symphony) as opposed to the random monotony of these DM songs.
It’s also nice to hear Kirk doing some solo’s again, but could he at least put away the “wah” for one song? His repetitive, non-lyrical wah solo’s are generally pretty lame on this disc upon my first 2-3 listens.
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